A rainy day gave Carlton Hale–a third-generation dairy farmer from Watkinsville, Ga.,–a few minutes to think about a project. He wanted to build an implement that his son, Russell, could pull behind his John Deere 7410 wide front end pedal tractor. The 7410 was actually Russell's second pedal tractor; the first was a JD 7020 four-wheel-drive, which proved a little hard for him to pedal.

But as for the 7410, "it was a night and day difference," Carlton said. "He could get on and pedal." Because his son was "crazy about tractors with dual wheels," Carlton got an axle from a friend who sells pedal tractor parts and added dual wheels to Russell's 7410.

Russell, then a 2-year-old who "loved machines" like his pedal tractors, also loved the box scraper blade made by his dad, with help from an uncle, Jon Zuck. The 2013 project actually began when Carlton saw a piece of flat iron in the shop and decided to bend it into a box blade. "I bent it by hand," Carlton said, adding that was the start of the blade, a piece of miniature machinery that now moves up and down to actually scraper.

"It took us a while to come up with that design," said Carlton, who found that teaming with his brother-in-law was an excellent idea. John works as a machinist at a machine/welding fabrication shop and those skills proved to be helpful, not only with this project, but with others as well.​